The present invention generally relates to a real-time vehicle traffic simulation. More particularly, the present invention relates to a system, method and computer program product for forecasting a vehicle traffic condition in a near future.
Traditional traffic management models are used for analyzing details of a road network (e.g., traffic signal timing, lane configurations and closures, and other aspects of a road network). J. Barceló, et al., “Online Microscopic Traffic Simulation Supports Real-time Traffic-management Strategies,” SIAM News, Volume 40, Number 9, November 2007, wholly incorporated by reference as if set forth herein, describes a real-time traffic management model. A traffic management model is often also known as traffic microscopic simulation, traffic microsimulation, or traffic simulation program, because it emulates a traffic flow on a road network at a relatively fine, or micro, level of detail, e.g., a level of an individual vehicle movement.
Benefits of emulating the traffic flow on the traffic road network at this level of detail are numerous, as the emulation can be used to: minimizing congestion, minimizing travel time or delay, reducing emissions, etc. For example, if this emulation could provide information that is communicated in real-time to a vehicle driver about a possible congestion on a particular road, the driver may detour the particular road and use an alternative route to arrive his destination. Thus, the driver may be able to arrive at his/her destination on time.
However, tools for emulating of traffic have not been successfully applied to real-time traffic analysis for a number of reasons. One reason has to do with the computation time required by traffic emulation. In spite of advances in a computation power, the traffic microsimulation tools are not fast enough to be run in real-time and thus their output (e.g., the number of vehicles on a particular road route) could not have been used in a real-time setting. Another reason is that a physical communication network link installed between a traffic road and a traffic emulation tool was not stable. Thus, traffic emulation tools do not readily incorporate typical real-time traffic data (e.g., real-time traffic speed and volume).